Bullets lay on the ground with the excrement and flies, each as cold as the greying world around Bambino. They were tasteless, indifferent and unaware of the beauty that was there only yesterday, the green open fields and trees that blossomed with joyous pride. Each was hollow, only that aggressive powder at its core, existing for the destruction of what it lacked the soul to comprehend.

Bullets cover the floor of the compound, the cheapest way by far to dispatch a human being. For less than a cent you can kill someone irreplaceable. You can take someone off the earth permanently, be the one their nightmares lead to. Riley bends to the floor and picks up a single bullet, so light, so cold. He turns it in the brilliant light of the morning, golden between his soil covered fingers before letting it fall back to the concrete. Each one is a dead child, a dead mother, a dead father. They are trinkets designed to take the only thing that really matters - life.

Bullets jingle as the trunk moves over the bumps, a bizarre music that jangles Ed's nerves. Every time he hears a casing hit the floor he sees Buddy fall again, eyes no longer seeing, his body just meat and bones. It wasn't right. His life was less than a cent in someone's bank account, just another inconsequential sale in the business of war. Now every time he raises his gun he knows that's all he is achieving, the slow accumulation of money to some bloated lord of war, the closest thing mankind will ever come to seeing Satan himself stride over the Earth.

The bullets are golden, golden like the sunlight and the highlights of Miranda's hair. She loved that colour, she loved the way the petals of the spring daffodils glowed in the dawn with auric splendour. The bullets are scattered like seeds of destruction around her cold body, oblivious to the blood that seeps over the ground already congealing and becoming brown. Mohammed takes his finger and moves her hair gently from her cold face, his tears alighting on her skin before he knows he's even crying.

Her aim was true, the bullet pierced skin expanding from the supersonic impact to the size of a quarter dollar. He hadn’t heard the shot and did not know he had been hit yet as the angry fist-like slug tore through him gathering flesh and tissue on its one way path through his abdomen. He heard something now, though every cell in his body reeled in shock at the immediate assault and he could do little save fall forward from the energy hammer that had just passed through his body. His sight grayed to a pinpoint and as he struggled to live but he could see her lying there in the grass watching him fade. The bullet would never be found, its mangled form lodged deeply in the hillside but its merit would be known to her family this day now safe from the intruder.

As it flies out the chamber and into the air with great elegance, the bullet aims for the target beyond the shooter. As it pushes through the air with great speed, it gains less distance than it was before. Until that moment when it strikes the target and all prevails. The spit second when the target falls and what was intended happens, as the being of grace and tall stature dies as the bullet scrapes through the internal structure and organs.

"Now, the bullet you refer to may be different from the actual bullet." He holds the ammunition up in the air.

"The bullet itself is the head of the cartridge." He points to the top.

"This is the case. It contains the propellant. Modern propellant contains mixtures of many types of propellants, mostly smokeless powders, although there are many whom still use classic gunpowder." He points to the displayed propellants on his table.

"The rim here provides a ledge for the extractor of the gun to grip on and separate the bullet from the casing when fired."

"And the primer ignites the propellant. There are may kinds of primers, with different kinds of external and internal priming." He finishes, and puts down the bullet. He watches us fervidly take down notes, and smiles.

The bullets are domed, shaped to fly fast and enter the human body to achieve maximum damage. Each one is fashioned to do the very thing we aren't supposed to do - kill. Though I don't much believe in sin, preferring notions of healthy vs non-healthy, these are a sin, every one of them. They are made to make someone rich who has no need of more money, but money is power in this world and power is a drug almost never refused.